I think you have cause and effect correct in your article headline – hate caming calling – but then abandoned that point of view in the Comments section. Hate is the cause, not the rifle; the rifle is only the means. Take away one method of causing carnage and those that hate will simply find another way. Rocks, knives, fists, explosives made out of manure…whatever they have to use, they will.

Yes, we have a method for getting rid of guns, but that won’t get rid of the hate in some people’s hearts. If we are to take any meaningful action, we must first be able to properly identify cause and effect. Hate is the cause of the attack; what is the cause of the hate?

I don’t think I ever said and I certainly don’t believe that the rifle was the cause. But a semi-automatic or automatic rifle certainly does make it easy to kill a lot of people fast.

You’re not the first commenter to suggest we need to focus on something other than guns (see past posts and comments). Hate, mental health, religion, nationality, etc. But meanwhile, mass shootings continue. Lots of different reasons. But the common denominator is guns. We need more focus on gun control.

What is the cause of violence? I say it is inherent in human nature. We are a tribal species and we react to perceived external threats that way. Also, grouping in large numbers such as cities and countries is a very recent development in our species’ history, thus almost constant war and violence throughout history. Also, the continued presence of psychopathy. None of these will be eliminated in our lifetimes, therefore doesn’t it make sense to try to minimize the lethality of the tools of violence?

What is the difference between an artillery cannon and a pistol? Size, obviously, and, for good reason, you will have a hard time buying your own personal cannon. Why shouldn’t the same logic apply to fire arms? It doesn’t take an AR-15 with a 40-round clip to plink varmints. A .22 rifle will do the job nicely and its shorter range is far safer for the farmer’s neighbors.

I won’t “Like” this post PT; it’s becoming to frequent and gets more depressing each time I/we read and hear about them.
Last night Sydney lit up with the ‘Raindow ” Colours on all major buildings and a vigil was held, at Taylor Square, which is the home to the homosexual (I object to the “G” word) community in Australia; I’ve never seen Sydney in such a state of shock as it is this time, as we wonder and contemplate the next which might well be a “bigger and better” atrocity than this one.

I’d not heard about any demonstrations of support overseas. I was too sickened by the news to watch any more than the initial reports. We have the means but obviously not the will to stop this sort of thing. And that’s the most sickening part of all.

It’s difficult to understand why hundreds of people would simple wait to be gunned down by someone with what is essentially a very small bore rifle. Why wouldn’t (at least) two or more people attempt to grab and stop this guy while he was reloading? Why weren’t there any law abiding people carrying a sidearm in the crowd? Florida is a concealed and open carry friendly state. I just don’t get it.

And… a civilian AR rifle (the AR is for the original manufacturer – Armalite, NOT Assault Rifle) isn’t much of a weapon. I never use mine to hunt anything larger than paper targets and varmints like squirrels, rabbits and prairie dogs.

I know that the victims are not being blamed here, it’s not even being implied. When did the assault stop…when someone WITH GUNS AND RIFLES arrived at the scene and took the shooter out. This is not rocket science here people. Get a clue.

The clue is….the killer arrived…his weapon of choice an AR-15. No amount of gun laws will prevent a determined person from using a gun. There are over 100 gun laws in effect on the books that LAW ABIDING people should follow and adhere to. Killers do not care about gun laws, never have and never will. Remember the Police showed up with guns…lots of them. The difference? The Police use them lawfully and the killer not so much because they could care less about gun laws! There is the clue.

The clue being that killers will always find a way to get a gun? So we should just ignore the problem? Another excuse for once again doing nothing? Absolutely not! The problem is huge and growing. Ignoring it will just mean a bigger problem to tackle in the future. It’s past time for gun lovers and the NRA to get out of the way and let responsible lawmakers do something about reducing the number of gun deaths in this country.

Congress is talking now about keeping people on the terror watch list from buying guns. Makes sense to me. I don’t know why such people weren’t already forbidden to buy guns. Ditto anyone on the no-fly list. It’s a logical start.

johnthecook…buying a gun? Who said you have to buy a gun to get one.People steal guns all the time AND the “black market” is full of them,and we all know they do not care about gun laws!
Registering guns is one step away from confiscation of guns. Here are some grim facts for others to check out. Adolf Hitler confiscated guns before killing over 13 MILLION people Joseph Stalin confiscated guns before killing 20 MILLION people. Mao Zedong confiscated guns before killing over 45 MILLION people.Pol Pot confiscated guns before killing over 2 MILLION people.

Also, John, Australia tackled the problem as PT suggests and got undeniable results. After a mass shooting the Aussies passed sensible gun control laws and have not had a mass shooting in the last 20 years. How can you argue with that?

The Aussies aren’t constitutionally protected from government infringement on their right to keep and bear arms. If you believe that our constitutional protection should be rescinded, call for nullification of the 2nd amendment – and possibly another revolution.

Nullification isn’t required, just reading, and honoring, the 2nd amendment as it is written. Let’s go with that. Meanwhile, there are plenty enough guns in circulation that by now we ought to have seen at least one significant case where a pistol-packin’ second-amendment revisionist convincingly stops one of these attacks.

“…The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” Since blind politicians often (unconstitutionally) infringe on that right in locations increasingly being labeled “free fire zones”, schools, hospitals and places that sell alcoholic beverages require a permitted carrier to break the law in order to save the lives of the sheep inside. I can see though that facts are not important.

Nobody on this page is calling for repealing the 2nd amendment that I can see. Some of us just think that, because the nature of “arms” has changed since the 18th century, military assault weapons are a demonstrated threat to the ability of our constitutional government’s mandate to ” . . . insure domestic tranquility, . . .”

Then, with all due respect, Jim – those people are simply wrong. The preponderance of weaponry used to defeat the most powerful nation on Earth (The British Empire) came from civilian hands. That is why our nations founders insisted on the people having weapons equivalent to those used by any national military.

A chronological history of how this notion that military grade weapons are not included in our right to keep and bear arms is rigorously explained in the book, Unintended Consequences” by John Ross.

Most people who aren’t interested in the facts won’t read it, but I’m betting that you will.

I looked up your book, Ima, but I’m not inclined to pay $42 for a long paperback book extolling the virtues of gun ownership. Amazon didn’t even provide the usual offer of a sample because it’s not available in e-book format. I did, however, get a pretty good sense of it by reading good, medium and poor reviews, it being a novel about a protagonist to whom guns are central to his life. For a few it was “life-changing” and at the other end of the spectrum was a well-written commentary saying it was inconsistently written (as to quality) and poorly edited.

I read an editorial on guns in our local paper this morning by a right-leaning columnist, Jay Ambrose, and tried my best to understand his views. He says, rightly, that gun control laws have been ineffective and, also rightly, that president Obama’s efforts at gun control have only encouraged the sale and spread of guns and ammo. What he did not mention was that gun laws, of which there are many, are ineffective because too many states and counties (such as those around Chicago, for example) do not have them. Nor did he mention the private sale and gun show loop holes which are huge. Little wonder the system works poorly.

I did find an interesting analysis of mass shootings over the past 7 years. There were 133 from 2009 through July, 2015, and these represent less than 1% of total homicides by guns. However, in the 11% of mass shootings where high-capacity magazines were used (i.e., assault weapons), there were 47% more deaths and 155% more injuries than in the other 89% of mass shootings. In other words, military weapons are enormously efficient for their design purpose.

Ambrose assumes that since America now has more than one gun per person in the population, that it is useless to try to control them and the only thing that makes sense is to out-gun the bad guys. He could be right, but I don’t think so. The thought of trying to register and control them all would be a Herculean task, especially given the mind-set of the culture. But if that’s the solution, why doesn’t the Republican Congress (both houses) eliminate all the gun-free zones and let everybody arm themselves? That would include, of course, Congress itself as well as courts, churches and public venues such as Disney World and commercial airplanes. And speaking of the latter, I can see the logic of allowing people on the no-fly list to buy guns because of lack of due process. But by that same logic, isn’t due-process denied in placing them on that list? By that reasoning, a no-fly list should be illegal, and yet, I hear no conservatives touting that. I wonder why not?

I for one am not ready to surrender to a wild-west scenario. I don’t buy that sensible gun control isn’t possible, at least banning assault weapons and closing the private loopholes. Society can change, faster than I would have imagined. A decade or two ago, nobody would have imagined that gay marriage would be legalized in any state and now, all of a sudden it seems, more than half the population agrees that gay people are human beings too. Who’d have thought it?

Pied has my email address. If you’re interested in a factual history of the gun/rights/constitution issues, get her to send me your email address and I’ll email you a digital copy compatible with Amazon’s Kindle.

You needn’t be interested in the storyline which is simply part of the medium used to encapsulate the history.

After re-reading these post including mine I have come to the conclusion that a great many people will not be satisfied until our Government has made it illegal for anyone EXCEPT the Government to own a gun or rifle.